Hi everyone! Long story short, i have a 2070 super atm and running arch linux as my sole distro and operating system for awhile now. Everything has been running great. Along with my gsync display. Lately i’ve been thinking about picking up a 5700 xt since it offers similar performance to my 2070 super but to have full linux integration and never really have to worry about nvidia supporting X, Y, or Z. I’ve already purchased a new freesync display a month ago in anticipation. Which ironically runs great with my 2070 super in untested gsync compatibility mode.
Today I actually pulled the trigger and order a sapphire 5700 xt pulse on amazon. But as I was reading a post on phoronix, I came across three freedesktop links regarding navi stability. I would post them but sadly i don’t have permission yet on here to post links. But they’re titled the following:
AMD Navi GPU frequent freezes on both Manjaro/Ubuntu with kernel 5.3 and mesa 19.2 -git/llvm9
Navi “divide error” hang
ring_gfx hangs/freezes on Navi gpus
These issues appear to be months old with complaints coming in just a few hours ago. Even with current 5.5 kernel and 5.6RC. They concerned me enough I cancelled my order on amazon. These issues seem awfully similar to issues windows users have been complaining about it and its made me deeply concerned about navi’s state on linux.
So i came here to ask those with 5700 xt’s, how has it been running for you? On phoronix all I can find is vega and polaris users talking about how it runs well for them and the few 5700 xt owners complained of those issues.
It was stable when I was running it on the Ubuntu LTS distro, using the proprietary drivers. The performance wasn’t great. I’m running Manjaro currently using the mesa drivers and the performance is actually pretty good, however it isn’t stable. Maybe I’m missing some drivers I need or there is a fix for this, but if so I can’t find one. I’m considering switching back to the 1080 ti for Linux and trying to figure out to apply the reset fix patch for passthroughs.
[Mastic_Warrior] - You really need to be on at least Kernel 5.4 and Mesa 20.0 for better support/stability. I think 19.2 was the last update for the 19 branch of Mesa.
that’s what i always have heard, but seeing those three topics from freedesktop, as i mentioned in my original post, that doesn’t appear to be the case. even with the latest mesa 20 and 5.6rc kernel, people in those three topics are still complaining about the same issues reported months ago. all the way back to september / october. all hard locks / freezes / black screens. to the point where even ssh can’t reboot the machine.
if i may ask, do you have a navi?
[Xanatos] - It was stable when I was running it on the Ubuntu LTS distro, using the proprietary drivers. The performance wasn’t great. I’m running Manjaro currently using the mesa drivers and the performance is actually pretty good, however it isn’t stable. Maybe I’m missing some drivers I need or there is a fix for this, but if so I can’t find one. I’m considering switching back to the 1080 ti for Linux and trying to figure out to apply the reset fix patch for passthroughs.
What has your stability problems been? hard locks? freezing? or just wonkyness? i can live with wonkyness due to immaturity of the drivers, but i can’t live with hard locks and freezes.
Everything freezes and I’m forced to restart. I just did some updates and switched to a new kernel. Going to see if anything improved, sometimes it can go a few days without this happening.
I’m running Solus with a 3900X and 5700XT, and I don’t have any issues today. My use case includes gaming, but I haven’t done anything with PCIe pass-through.
YMMV depending on the distribution you use. If you’re going for Ubuntu, then 20.04 may be your best bet, although I ran 19.10 for a bit at the end of last year and it was OK. The performance wasn’t quite as good as it is now, but I never had any hard locks or freezes.
No, I am on Poor-dozer with a RadeonHD 7790. Looking at phoronix, there was some more work done for the Navi cards. It seems like people are having the most issues with the 5700 cards and less with the 5800 and 5600 cards.
Are you using the ACO compiler? if not, you may want to give it a try RADV_PERFTEST=aco
You may be better off sticking with the NV card until you can get to 5.5 or 5.6 then. Rule of thumb in the GNU/Linux world is to not go bleeding edge on hardware unless you have the time and/or ability to tinker and get things running with little resources out there.
Lastly, have you looked at the output of dmesg or looked through your systemd journal to figure out what is happening before you have to power cycle?
I’m using a Radeon 5700 on Fedora (k-ver 5.5.8). Runs almost like a dream. I’ve noticed that some benchmarks (some on Unreal Engine) - exclusively those that use Vulkan - produce a lot of visual artifacts. Using DXVK does not do that though. Otherwise, performance is great, and I’ve been able to play everything I threw at it so far (whatever Proton can possibly run anyway). Did not try running OpenCL yet, had a brief attempt with Folding@Home, but did not succeed yet. Drivers might not be available though, so we’ll see. I might jump ship to Manjaro or PopOS on that PC if that will be giving me grief.
I was considering giving Fedora a shot, since I don’t see a lot of complaining from people using it. I might slap that on a harddrive along with solus and see what happens. I’ve never had a lot of luck with Fedora but maybe this will be the exception.
@Xanatos Unless you are not committed to your distro, usually distro hopping is not the solution and instead you should invest the effort to get things working. Or rather, if you rely on distro hoping as the solution, then you will not learn how to diagnose and fix the issues.
since you are running Arch, you have access to all of the bleeding edge software. I would recommend looking at the Arch Wiki. Particularly with the dynamic power managment issues on Navi. If you post your issues to the Small Linux Issues thread, we can better assist you.
**Edit: To Op.
I am sorry, I did not understand that you do not already have the card. I did not register on the cancelled order part. Sorry for hijacking the thread.
its ok mastic. either way the fact you have been trying to help is useful regardless. hijack away. i’m still on the fence. apart of me is curious to try for myself, the other part of me not sure if i really want to take the risk. even though i can. i already have a freesync sitting here next to me that was meant for it.
seeing the more positive posts gives me some ease and hope. for those who don’t have any issues with navi, do you use your computers 24 / 7 and leave it on all the time?
Well the 2070 super is a better card then a 5700xt in the first place.
so i personally wouldn’t recommend it.
The Radeon drivers are still not great for every card either.
The AMD drivers are indeed integrated in the kernel.
However it’s not a smooth experience for every card.
I’m not committed to Manjaro, I generally prefer Opensuse. I just wanted to play around with it and try it out while the drivers for this card matured. As for investing the effort to get it going, thats what I’m currently doing, I’m not giving up quite yet.
i’m running ubuntu mate 18.04lts with the 5.3.0-42-generic kernel and the mesa drivers and the performance is night and day better than amd proprietary drivers and for me the reliability has been better as well. i am running a 5700 xt 50th ae reference card. just spent all day (roughly midnight to 10pm taking a few 1/2h breaks) playing payday 2 and not a single issue.
hey guys just want to update, i went ahead and reordered the 5700 xt. seeing the positive responses here and reading some discussions on other sites i felt more reassured. i’m eager to try it and hope it works well. i really do want to support the open source efforts.